


exit, pursued by a bear

by tritonreverse



Series: you know what that is? growth [1]
Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Humor, after school study sessions, wild speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-13 14:14:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18470617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tritonreverse/pseuds/tritonreverse
Summary: Life isn’t like the movies, and even if it were, Peter Parker is not Ron Swanson, or, team-building through collaborative improvisation.(the acadec gang doesn’t know where Peter is but they sure know a lot about pop culture)





	exit, pursued by a bear

“What if Peter’s like Ron Swanson, you know, with the ex-wives?” Sally says one day, during the liminal time where they’re still supposed to be in acadec practice but Liz has run out of cards, Mr. Harrington is deep in a book, and the rest of them are more than ready to settle into another round of “What is Parker doing when he ditches?” MJ doesn’t know why they play this game, but Mr. Harrington seems inclined to let them under the heading of “creative thinking” or something, so it’s not like she’s going to say anything. Anyway, nationals are two weeks away and one of Liz’s leadership books ( _MJ’s not one to say that someone has too many books but the stack of books on team leadership and smart work and snake oil of winning is threatening to break Liz’s locker door)_ says that teambuilding and stress relief are just as important as preparation so...here they are.

“What, like Parker’s cool enough to have multiple women chasing him?” Flash snorted, kicking his feet up on the table, only to quickly remove them at Liz’s glare. “I think it’s more likely he’s just dealing pot.”

MJ rolled her eyes, and returned to her book. If this was where they were already going, there was no need for her to leave _Cryptonomicon_ , despite the fact that she was angry at approximately half the main characters. _(Like,_ **_so_ ** _sexist but she couldn’t put the book down, it was infuriating.)_ She didn’t think Parker was dealing weed, though he could probably get away with it, being an unassuming white boy. He was really too straight-edge of a kid, though, took all those damn Captain America propaganda videos to heart.  

That was what made this recent spate of disappearances all the more puzzling. She’s been watching Parker more closely than usual _(okay, no one, not even herself, needed to know that she’d had a low-key Parker radar since basically fourth grade)_ and he was definitely hiding something. At first she’d thought it was only grief, which, understandable. She still had both of her parents, but to lose one of them, and so violently, would have definitely messed up her worldview for a long while. Whatever was going on, though, seemed to be a secret he was keeping from Ned, too. She knew _that_ because Ned had taken to sitting closer to her on the days that Peter didn’t show up, looking like a lost puppy.

Of course, that had changed just a week or so ago, with Ned suddenly glued even more omnipresently to Peter’s side. She snuck a sidelong glance at him as Sally went deep into a theory that seemed to be more than a little pulled from _A Comedy of Errors_ , involving identical twins but one had gone missing? Ned looked like he was trying to look like he was paying attention, but kept sneaking glances at his phone.

 _Ah-ha._ If anyone actually knew where Parker was, it’d be Ned...but it wasn’t like MJ cared, really. Not at all. Just the knowledge that if she _did_ care, she could find out was enough.

“I mean, clearly he’s the Slayer,” said Abe, entirely too seriously. “He has to go fight monsters that spawn under our school, and he’s secretly dating a super hot but creepy vampire who is a bad idea.”

Honestly, this sounded more likely than the drug dealer theory. If there was anyone who would make bad romantic decisions _and_ stupid self-sacrificing ones, it would be Peter Parker.

“No! He’s like Veronica Mars!” Betty half-yelled, drawing a raised eyebrow from Mr. Harrington. She quieted, but continued. “Ever since his uncle died he’s been living a life as a private eye searching for the truth!” This was the third meeting in a row that Betty had brought this theory up, clearly herself going through a re-watch of the show, and MJ couldn’t help it.

“Who needs Peter Parker, private eye when you could just hire Jessica Jones out of Hell’s Kitchen?” she said. She didn’t know a lot about Jones, just some from one of her Tumblr friends who lived over that way and had learned about the deeply angry investigator when she’d broken a door in their building.

“Yeah, okay, like we know who that is,” sniffed Flash. MJ favored him with one of her favorite looks, the “you could disappear tomorrow and I wouldn’t care” glare, and he puffed up like tetraodontidae, but mercifully, remained silent. _(What? They were still technically in practice and without science expert Parker someone was going to have to pick up slack.)_ She pointedly turned back to her book, definitely not about to divulge the fact that she had a Tumblr to this crew, even if it contained her closest school friends.

“Hear me out,” started Charles. “It’s like that classic Anne Hathaway movie, right? _The Princess Diaries_ but he’s a lost prince of a minor European principality and he’s having to take prince lessons because he can’t rule on the strength of physics alone.” This might have been the worst theory yet, and it was what prompted MJ to actually contribute. She checked her bookmark and then closed _Cryptonomicon_ with enough force to shake the table.

“Clearly, Parker is the spider-dude he claims to know through the Stark Internship.” Now, MJ had considered and dismissed this theory idly before, but it was definitely more realistic than Prince Peter of Liechtenstein or something. He wasn’t cool enough to be the guy that once stopped a car to save a kid, though, to be fair, like the Slayer theory, it did sound vaguely like him.

Silence hovered over the table. Apparently no one had actually considered this. MJ picked her book back up, mission complete, and almost started reading again when Ned opened his mouth. He apparently thought better of what he was about to say, and she raised an eyebrow at him.

“No, there’s no way he’s Spider-Man,” said Flash.

“Oh, Spider-Man, is it?” said Betty, skeptically. “I thought only Peter was on first-name terms with him.” 

“Yeah! He’s pretty cool, nothing like Parker,” said Flash, alarmingly enthusiastically. “I saw him just last week! He stopped a guy from taking this lady’s backpack, and then climbed up a building!”

“Oh, really?” snarked Abe. “Are you sure you saw that or was it just on YouTube?”

Bored or not, if MJ had known that her half-hearted theory was going to set Flash on a dissertation on the character of Queens’ own vigilante, she would have never opened her mouth, but Bobby Shaftoe had her about three seconds from throwing the book out the window, and she couldn’t do that. Not with the look the librarian had shot her when he saw what she was reading, which was definitely not on the approved list of books for high school girls. She basically had to finish the damn book now.

If this had been a movie, this would have been when Peter slid into the room, with some dramatic excuse for his lateness _(and then he and Liz would have stared at each other in their stupid “we like each other but one is too busy and one is too chicken to do anything about it” thing. Not that MJ was jealous, they were just annoying.)_ It wasn’t, though. The clock ticked over to 5:00 and Liz sighed heavily before leaning forward to address them.

“Well, I can’t keep you here any longer. Next meeting, we’re testing our weak areas so study over the weekend, and make sure that we can all at least be solid backup in the event of brain freeze or . . .” She didn’t need to finish. The “or if Peter actually quits or, like, sleeps in and forgets that acadec is a thing he pledged his life to” could go unsaid. “Thanks to all of you who were here for being here, and don’t forget to check your calendars for a time for us to get together and practice outside our familiar surroundings.”

Mr. Harrington started at the sound of everyone gathering their books and bags, and ineffectually tried to say “yes, what Liz said!” but MJ was pretty sure she was the only one who heard him. She crammed her books into her bag, and was about to slide a headphone into her ear when Liz grabbed her elbow.

“Hey, so . . . Peter isn’t, isn’t Spider-Man, yeah, MJ?” Liz looked worried, and MJ supposed it was something along the lines of an actual superhero being something that could make their team ineligible or something. For the sake of her actual friendship with Liz, she refrained from rolling her eyes.

“No, I’m pretty sure he isn’t, mainly because he’d be unable to avoid telling us all,” she said. “He’s probably just over-committed himself to helping his aunt or something and doesn’t want to admit it.”

Liz’s face relaxed, just a bit, a bit that anyone not as observant as MJ probably wouldn’t have seen.

“You’d know.” _(That was deeply unfair.)_ “Well, we should get together some time, talk about college and also how _Paper Towns_ did the book so wrong.” Liz’s enthusiasm could be infectious, if you let it. MJ shrugged, knowing that Liz knew her well enough to read that as _just gchat me when you’re free_.

As she walked to her locker, she was surprised to see Parker, of all people, quietly conferring with Ned in the hallway. She cleared her throat and watched the pair of them startle, satisfyingly looking like her old pet rabbit right after she turned the light on.

“You know I don’t care?” she said, shoving the book at the very bottom of her “to read” pile. “I just wanted to see you jump.”  
It was gratifying, their faces, and it carried her all the way home. _(And if the fourth website she checked was a Spider-Man tracking site, she did it in an incognito window and no one would ever be able to actually pin it to her. And it was knowledge and knowledge was power, and she was not obsessed, just observant.)_

**Author's Note:**

> Never would I have expected to write ~8000 words about these kids in as short a time as I have, but I’m awfully glad I have. This universe is a fun one to play around in.
> 
> Additionally, did you know that it's not called "acadec" in Texas, and this threw your author for a loop for a decent bit?


End file.
